Word Confusion: Bight vs Bite vs Byte

Plural for the noun: bights
Gerund: bighting

Third person present verb: bights
Past tense or past participle: bighted
Present participle: bighting

Plural for the noun: bites
Gerund: biting

Third person present verb: bites
Past tense: bit
Past participle: bitten
Present participle: biting

Plural: bytes

• A bend or curve in the shore of a sea or river
• A body of water bounded by such a bend
• A bay or gulf

[Knots] A loop of rope, as distinct from the rope’s ends

• [Knots] The middle part of a rope, as distinguished from the ends
• [Knots] The slack middle part of an extended rope

A corner, bend, or angle

• A hollow

Verb, transitive:
To fasten with a loop of rope

• A wound inflicted by an animal’s or a person’s teeth
• A wound inflicted by a snake, insect, or spider
• An act of bait being taken by a fish
• [Dentistry] The bringing together of the teeth in occlusion
• [Dentistry] The imprint of the teeth in occlusion in a plastic material

A piece cut off by biting

• [Informal] A quick snack
• A small morsel of prepared food, intended to constitute one mouthful
• A short piece of information

A sharp or pungent flavor

• Incisiveness or cogency of style
• A feeling of cold in the air or wind

Verb, intransitive:
To press the teeth into something

• Snap

[Angling; of fish] To take bait

To accept an offer or suggestion, especially one intended to trick or deceive

[Informal] To admit defeat in guessing

To act effectively

• Grip
• Hold

[Slang] To be notably repellent, disappointing, poor, etc.

• Suck

Verb, transitive:
[Of a person or animal] Use the teeth to cut into something in order to eat it

• [Of an animal or a person] Use the teeth in order to inflict injury on
• [Of a snake, insect, or spider] Wound with fangs, pincers, or a sting
• [Of an animal; bite at] Snap at
  • Attempt to bite
• [Of an acid] Corrode a surface
• [Of a fish] Take the bait or lure on the end of a fishing line into the mouth
• [Informal; of a person] Be persuaded to accept a deal or offer

[Of a tool, tire, boot, etc.] Grip a surface

• [Of an object] Press into a part of the body, causing pain
• Cause emotional pain
• [Of a policy or situation] Take effect, with unpleasant consequences
• [North American; informal] Be very bad, unpleasant, or unfortunate

• A unit of memory size

The combination of bits used to represent a particular letter, number, or special character

The Bight of Benin was the scene of extensive slave trading between the 16th and the 19th century” (Editors).

There is a controversy in the knots world as to whether bights and loops are distinct.

“The bowline on a bight is a knot which makes a pair of fixed-size loops in the middle of a rope, useful for forming a loop in the middle of a rope” (Bowline).

I spied a bight of meadow some way below the roadway in an angle of the river.

“I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking” (Conrad).

“They’re buried tightly in the seat bight, the area between the seat’s back and bottom cushion” (The Washington Post).

“The bight of the reins (the connected end portion) is off the right side of the horse’s neck — underneath your right rein” (Rein).

Verb, transitive:
I could just drift, he thought, and sleep and put a bight of line around my toe to wake me.

Pull until the U-shaped bight is about 6-inches long and the knot is snug.

Cross the bight over the two ropes you are holding in your left hand and through the loop that has formed.

Perry’s dog had given her a nasty bite.

Eve took a bite out of the apple, and that was that.

His face was covered in mosquito bites.

By four o’clock he still hadn’t had a single bite.

Due to the mandible’s angle and the anterior teeth not making contact, it resulted in an anterior open bite.

Bite registration is one of three main types of dental impressions.

Robyn took a large bite out of her sandwich.

I plan to stop off in the village and have a bite to eat.

I included minced bacon bites with the cheese.

It’s a small bite of interesting thoughts, statistics and references.

The pie had a fresh, lemony bite.

His colorful characterizations brought added bite to the story.

By early October there’s a bite in the air.

Verb, intransitive:
Does your parrot bite?

The fish aren’t biting today.

I knew it was a mistake, but I bit anyway.

I’ll bite, who is it?

This wood is so dry the screws don’t bite.

Oh, man, this bites!

Verb, transitive:
Rosa bit into a cupcake and moaned.

He bit a mouthful from the sandwich.

She had bitten, scratched, and kicked her assailant.

She was bitten by an adder.

It is not unusual for this dog to bite at its owner’s hand.

Chemicals have bitten deep into the stone.

The trout are biting this morning.

We estimate that a hundred or so retailers should bite.

Once on the wet grass, my boots failed to bite.

The handcuffs bit into his wrists.

Cheryl’s betrayal had bitten deep.

It was a few months later when the cuts in art education started to bite.

It bites that your mom won’t let you go.

A single byte can be used to represent 2⁸ or 256 different values.

Originally designed to store character data, the byte has become the fundamental unit of measurement for data storage.

A megabyte contains 1,000 x 1,000, or 1,000,000 bytes.

There are 1,024 megabytes in a gigabyte.

Subsequent error-free testing, with the packet set to eight bytes, confirmed that the documentation had been misleading.

Storage is measured in bytes, one byte containing eight bits, and representing storage for one character in European alphabets.